Title Eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry : inventing agency, inventing genre / Paula R. Backscheider

Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks
ProQuest Ebook Central

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xxvii, 514 pages) Contents Introduction -- Changing contexts -- Systems, gender, and persistent issues -- Agency and the "marked marker" -- Anne Finch and what women wrote -- The social and the formal -- Anne Finch and popular poetry -- Poetry on poetry -- The spleen as legacy -- Women and poetry in the public eye -- Poetry as news and critique -- The woman question -- Elizabeth Singer Rowe -- Hymns, narratives, and innovations in religious poetry -- The voice of paraphrase -- The hymn as personal lyric -- Religious poetry as subversive narrative -- Devout soliloquies -- Friendship poems -- The legacy of Katherine Philips -- Encouragement and the counteruniverse -- Jane Brereton -- Adaptation and ideology -- Retirement poetry -- Beyond convention -- Memory, time, and Elizabeth Carter -- Reflection and difference -- The elegy -- What did women write? -- Representative composers: Darwall and Seward -- The elegy and same-sex desire -- Entertainment and forgetting -- The sonnet, Charlotte Smith, and what women wrote -- The sonnet and the political -- Sonnet sequences -- Women poets and the spread of the sonnet -- The emigrants, conversations, and Beachy Head -- Smith as transitional poet Summary This major study offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions. Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms. Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women's poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important canonical and popular verse forms, she gives particular attention to such topics as women's use of religious poetry to express candid ideas about patriarchy and rape; the continuing evolution and important role of the supposedly antiquarian genre of the friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 467-498) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English Print version record digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Subject English poetry -- 18th century -- History and criticism Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century English poetry -- Women authors -- History and criticism Authorship -- Sex differences -- History -- 18th century Invention (Rhetoric) -- History -- 18th century Literary form -- History -- 18th century English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism POETRY -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. English literature -- Women authors Authorship -- Sex differences English poetry English poetry -- Women authors Invention (Rhetoric) Literary form Women and literature Vrouwelijke auteurs. Gedichten. Great Britain Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780801895906 0801895901

  Permalink